"Rights of Passage"
by Mary Jane Schramm
It was a bright fall day, and the young male lay half-snoozing among the low dunes, well above the water’s edge. Only partly rousing from his stupor, he shifted his weight, dug a little deeper into the sand, and scratched a spot where he was peeling. He was on a strange sort of enforced beachside vacation: one featuring no seafood specials or bottomless well drinks. He grew hungry and thirsty, and was curiously cold; the warm sun and sand felt too good to budge; he resumed his nap.
On His Own: Earlier in the year his mother had borne and cared well and selflessly for him, feeding him the richest milk, defending him, never leaving his side–even to feed herself. That is, until she’d abruptly left him: a winsomely rotund, clueless butterball without a scrap of tutoring in the ABCs of life, but with a thick blubber layer to see him through the learning process. This Mirounga angustirostrus, or northern elephant seal pup, would prove a precocious and remarkable creature.
Kiddie Pool: Along with a cohort of other weaned “e-seal” pups he’d played in tidepools and surf, and by trial and error caught fish (good!) and other critters (some not so good). Soon he’d ventured out to the open sea where he honed his diving skills: by age two months already reaching 2,000 foot depths - nearly half his adult capacity; and long breathholds. He learned to evade killer whales and white sharks, and read the day-night up-down migrations of the fish and squid that he slurped down with gusto. He navigated California and Pacific Northwest coastal waters north to Alaska, traveling constantly, alternating active swimming with lazy “drift dives” to conserve energy, digest, and perhaps even sleep.
Skin off His Back: Now, he was buff and tough and scrappy, a hunter and a survivor: a curved scar on his flank spoke of a brief shark encounter in the Gulf of the Farallones. The other remarkable feature was that, snakelike, his weathered tan skin and hair were sloughing off in ragged patches, a sleek silvery hide rich in blood vessels forming just below, in a process called a catastrophic molt. While this transformation was underway, he needed to conserve core body heat to sustain his heart, lungs and other internal organs. For an animal that most of the year spends less time at the surface than some whale species, lying on shore for a month or more felt strange but necessary.
Site Fidelity: Studying wildlife that spends so much time at sea is challenging. Luckily, elephant seals show ‘site fidelity’ - they return to molt and to mate on the same beaches where they were born, traveling thousands of miles from their feeding grounds to do so. Major north-central California breeding sites include Pt. Reyes National Seashore, Año Nuevo State Park, and San Simeon; a small rookery lies on the Mendonoma coast, location undisclosed. This consistency enables scientists to retrieve data from tagged seals: months’ worth of biological and behavioral data. New research by scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz - the Mecca for northern elephant seal research - involves attachment of instrument packages with satellite tags that upload data whenever an e-seal surfaces. The ‘biologgers’ track and record diving behavior, migration route, and feeding success in real time.
The Gene Pool: After his inaugural “weanling” fall molt, our male elephant seal will adopt a new haul-out pattern: molting each summer; then, each winter as a bull he will join other hopefuls eager to corral and breed with a harem of up to 100 females and pass on his feisty DNA to a new generation.
With elephant seal breeding season coming up, plan a visit to Pt. Reyes National Seashore: https://tinyurl.com/PtReyesNatlSeashore-ESeals Also visit https://ucnrs.org/learning-to-swim-elephant-seal-style/ and https://tinyurl.com/E-seals-BayNature.
Images
• Top: E-seal cow cradles newborn pup. Photo: J. Kirkhart-CreativeCommons 2.0-Generic.
• Middle: Lazing e-seal weaner at King Range, Humboldt Co. . Photo: Bob Wick/Bureau of and Management.
• Bottom: "Elephant seal in entourage of late Queen wearing latest style in 'fascinator' hats." Photo Credit: Roxanne Beltran-UCSC. .
Mary Jane "MJ" Schramm is a marine conservationist, author, journalist, filmmaker, and naturalist. She has worked aboard NOAA and other vessels off California, Mexico, Alaska and the Bahamas, focusing on marine mammals and seabirds and assisted with elephant seal research and intertidal monitoring on the Farallon Islands.
MJ led whale watch/nature cruises to Baja California and the Farallones, and managed Oceanic Society ecotours. For nearly a decade she was Public Relations Director at The Marine Mammal Center while doing rescue and rehab. She co-authored West Coast Whale Watching (HarperCollins West). She's also a screener/jurist for two marine film festivals.
